Every February St. James presents a program celebrating grandparents. We take an entire morning to enjoy Grandparents’ Day. It is a morning full of class presentations, touring the campus, sharing handmade gifts with your loved ones, and making memories with those most dear to you. One fun thing the children get to partake in is making a class item for the silent auction on Grandparents’ Day. This year, the class made a piece of pottery that is a decorative bowl of their handprints. We had a local potter, Chris Thomas, come to class to discuss pottery and help in this endeavor. After tracing and cutting out the children’s handprints, each student chose their glaze and painted their handprints. Then, Mrs. Thomas and our parent volunteer arranged the handprints onto a bowl to take with her to dry and fire in the kiln. This is the neatest project I have been a part of while working at St. James. We are so excited to see how it turns out!

To practice reading, I paired the class up and assigned them a story. I am blown away with the progress I am seeing in regard to their reading. While in pairs I was so happy to see how encouraging and patient the children were with one another. Not only does this help with reading fluency, it helps the children learn how to work together and be a kind friend.

In math the children have been covering all manner of mathematical topics, but this week we began learning about congruent shapes. It is fascinating to see the students work through things that puzzle them. I think the terminology threw the class at first, but once they understood the definition they had fun building and drawing congruent shapes. Introducing geometric concepts in first grade is beneficial because it gives the students a firm foundation in what will become more complex concepts.

Have a blessed day!

Claire

After a wonderful Christmas break, we were all ready to get back in the groove of first grade. To have some fun and help the adjustment back to class, the children had Show and Tell. Each student brought one thing from Christmas and presented it to the class. Every student I have ever taught has loved Show and Tell; it is alway one of the children's favorite times. I always enjoy Show and Tell and watching the children put their thoughts into words and sentences. It is a great way for the children to practice speaking in front of an audience, especially their peers. Public speaking is something that the more you practice, the more confident you become at doing it. This is one of my favorite parts of St. James. The children begin performing and speaking in front of an audience at a young age. By the time students graduate from St. James they are confident in speaking in front of a large audience, are respectful audience members, and have eloquent language when expressing themselves. We are getting ready for a semester full of excitement and learning through field trips, projects, and everyday fun!

Mrs. Gordon

November and December are two of the busiest month of the school year. There is much to do and not as much time. St. James holds an annual Veterans Chapel to recognize all who have and continue to serve. To honor the veterans that were present, the First Grade recited a poem to show their appreciation for the veterans’ sacrifice. For one of our community service projects, the children reached out to other veterans from our community who are currently living abroad. The children colored pictures and wrote “thank you for your service” on the papers. We, along with second grade, mailed them to local community members who are stationed in Germany.

At St. James we enjoy reaching out to the community and showing our children how important it is to take care of our community. We know it is helpful to instill those leadership skills at a young age. I really reinforce the idea that we do things for others to make them happy, not for our benefit. A recent community service project the kids participated in was making Christmas cards for the residence at Cornerstone Retirement home. We traveled to Cornerstone to pass out the cards and sing Christmas carols to the residents in the memory loss unit and the health care unit. The children were so sweet and compassionate with the elderly people. We will definitely be visiting our friends at Cornerstone again soon.

In science, the class has continued to study weather. Lately the focus has been on wind and noticing changes in the weather. Over several class periods, the class made kites. One beautiful afternoon the children were able to take the kites for a fly. It was so neat to see the children fly their own creations and being able to feel and see the elements of wind that have been discussed in class. They had so much joy and pride as they flew their kites around the soccer field. We are really looking forward to growing plants next semester!

Have a blessed holiday season,

Mrs. Gordon

This year, St. James has introduce a new social studies curriculum for grades one through three. This program, Core Knowledge, has been very fun to teach. The children have already traveled to ancient Egypt and visited central American to see a few early American civilizations such as the Maya, Aztec, and Inca. To wrap up our study of the Maya and Aztec people the children had a group project to build temples. The project was designed for the students and their parents to come together, use the guidelines provided, and build realistic Aztec or Maya temples. I love being able to include parents in activities with the students. It’s so beneficial for the children to work one-on-one with their parents and develop those teamwork skills. It’s also a great way to make fun memories at school! This project could not have turned out any better. Everyone had fun, the temples were built using creativity, authenticity, and using our knowledge from our studies. I’ve never seen the children so proud of their work before, and the third graders and a fellow teachers were very impressed too.

One tradition at St. James that the children really look forward to is Book Character Day. It’s a way for first through third grade to still dress up on Halloween and include literature. It’s always so much fun for the children to choose one of their favorite books and create a costume that matches one of its characters. Lower school is buzzing about Book Character Day by October 1st. All of the students want to know who is going to dress up as whom and how to make themselves look as accurate to their character as possible. Aside from bringing literature into Halloween, the children have to present themselves in front of all of Lower School. For many of the first graders this is the first time for them to stand up in front of a group of their peers and present themselves. They have done it in years past, which gives them confidence, but it’s the first time this year and it’s a little different and in front of an older group of children. Having presentations similar to this helps build the children’s confidence in public speaking, presenting their thoughts clearly and articulately, and helps some jump over the hurdle of shyness. As a teacher, it’s neat to see the growth from the first to the second graders and the second graders to the third graders. I look forward to seeing my group of first graders grow each year.  I love anything that gets children excited about books and reading! It is fun for the teachers to dress up and be a part of the fun on Halloween, too!

Looking forward to the holidays with this adventurous group of first graders! We are gearing up for Veterans Day Chapel, our Thanksgiving program, and many activities in December. Have a blessed day!

Claire Gordon

We’ve had some visitors on campus over the past few weeks. Firefighters visit St. James every year to teach us all about fire safety. This is a great program for young children to attend. It reminds the children what to do when there is a fire and how to talk about fire safety with their parents. This year the firefighters focused on two ways out of a burning house, making sure fire detectors work, and making sure the kids know where to meet with their parents outside in the case of a fire in their home. I always look forward to this program, it’s very useful information that the children need to hear year after year. We are so thankful for the firefighters!

Friday, October 12, 2018, was Pink Out day. This is the day the school takes part in the community wide effort to bring awareness of breast cancer. The Komen race for the cure is a huge event in Texarkana that brings the whole town together. The children loved getting to where pink and supporting breast cancer awareness and research.

The pre-k students have a study about pets. One morning while we were on the playground, we noticed two horses in the preschool drop off lane. The pre-k classes had planned to take a field trip to a farm that belonged to a St. James parent, but the weather had been very wet and they were unable. The very thoughtful mom didn’t want the children to miss out on a hands-on learning experience. So, she brought two horses to campus for the children to see, pet, and learn about first hand. Luckily for first grade, we saw the horses and asked if we could pet them. We were able to have an impromptu lesson about horses and how to take care of animals. The students were so gentle with the horses and were very attentive to Mrs. Ashley and Mrs. Donna. We are very thankful for thoughtful parents!

In science we have been studying air and weather. The children have discovered that moving air is wind and there are several ways you can see how wind moves.The class has investigated types of clouds and what moves them. The children have made pinwheels to notice the speed of wind. The students observed a wind vane to understand that wind blows in directions (north, east, south, west). They have also viewed different clouds to see speed and the direction of wind. Another way the children have interacted with wind is by blowing bubbles. Blowing bubbles is a quick way to notice how and where wind is moving. I grouped the children and had them try to blow bubbles around corners, up, down, use a lot of force, and barely use force to notice how wind moves and behaves. It was a beautiful afternoon and the children loved having science outside and exploring wind.

Have a blessed week,

Mrs. Gordon